The principle which artists now have mainly to contend for is that of TRUTH; forgotten, trodden under foot, despised, if not hated for ages, this must be their watchword. If they be architects, let them remember how vitally necessary truthfulness in construction, in design, and in decoration, is to any permanent success in even the smallest of their works; or sculptors, let them recollect how vain and unsatisfactory has been their abandonment of truth in their attempted revival among us of what in Classic times were--what they no longer are--real representations and natural works of art; if painters, let them remember how all-important a return to first principles and truth in the delineation of nature and natural forms is to them, if they are ever to create a school of art by which they may be remembered in another age. Finally, I wish that all artists would remember the one great fact which separates by so wide a gap the architects, sculptors, and painters of the best days of the Middle Ages from us now--their earnestness and their thorough self-sacrifice in the pursuit of art, and in the exaltation of their religion. They were men who had a faith, and hearts earnestly bent on the propagation of that faith; and were it not for this, their works would never have had the life, vigour, and freshness which even now they so remarkably retain. Why should we not be equally remembered three centuries hence? Have we less to contend for, less faith to exhibit, or less self-sacrifice to offer than they, because we live in later days? Or is it true that the temper of men is so much changed, and that the vocation of art has changed with it? I believe not. There have been evidences enough that there is no lack of liberality on the part of our employers, where there is any evidence of skill and enthusiasm for his work on the part of the artist. The English architect of to-day has opportunities as great as those of any of his predecessors, if he will but use them. But he must use his art as one who respects both himself and it. There is no real respect for an art when it is treated, as it always has been by the Renaissance architects and their followers, as a mere affair of display. No good building was ever yet erected in which the architect designed the front, and left the flanks or internal courts to take care of themselves. So also no good building was ever seen, in which the exterior only was thought of, and the internal decoration and design neglected. But this is almost universal now, except in the few buildings in which the Gothic style has been carefully revived. In such treatment of art as this, there is an ingrain falseness, which is as demoralizing as it is ruinous. If architecture is only an affair of outside display, no one will take any real interest in it, for from the first it is the evidence of the architect’s love for his work which has given the human interest which is all in all to it.